Island EightIsle of

Discontent Civilians
(Extract from: Muse of the Long Haul Thirty-One Isles of the Creative
Imagination)
Copyright, Dr Ian Irvine, 2013 all rights
reserved. All short extracts from the texts
discussed are acknowledged and used
under fair usage related to review and
theoretical critique under international
copyright law.
Cover Image: Ishtar [Inanna] in Hades
from the painting by Ernest Wallcousins.
[Taken from Donald A. Mackenzies
Myths of Babylonia and Assyria [1915],
Ch V, "Myths of Tammuz and Ishtar,"
p.96 from Project Gutenberg version
which is in the public domain
internationally. In this highly
Romanticised image Ishtar/Inanna stands
before her older sister Erishkigal in the
Sumerian version of Hades. The image of
Sigmund Freud taken in 1921 is by Max
Halberstadt and is also in the public
domain internationally (from Wikipedia
site).
Publisher: Mercurius Press, Australia,
2013. NB: This piece is published at
Scribd as part of a series drawn from the
soon to be print published non-fiction
book on experiential poetics entitled:
Muse of the Long Haul: Thirty-One Isles
of the Creative Imagination.

The Isle of Discontent Civilians

It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilisation is built up upon a renunciation of
instinct, how much it presupposes precisely the non-satisfaction (by suppression, repression or
some other means?) of powerful instincts. This cultural frustration dominates the large field
of social relationships between human beings.1
If the development of civilisation has such a far-reaching similarity to the development of the
individual and if it employs the same methods, may we not be justified in reaching the
diagnosis that, under the influence of cultural urges, some civilisations, or some epochs of
civilisationpossibly the whole of mankindhave become neurotic?2

From the Great Above the goddess opened (set) her ear, her receptor for wisdom, from
the Great Below.3
Among the first stories to be recovered from the ancient ruins of the Sumerian and Akkadian
civilisations were a group of stories about the Goddess Inanna (Ishtar to the Akkadians).
These stories are these days labelled a cycle and one of them, the myth of Inannas Descent
into the Underworld has long fascinated me. Although she descends to an infernal, egoannihilating region, she does so with dignitythere is a rhythm to her willed dissolution that,
strangely enough, suggests soul mechanisms related to personal liberation. At each level of
the underworld Inanna is forced to discard something of value, until she is naked before her
evil sisterwhich I read as existentially authentic.
Inanna is styled The Queen of Heaven and Earth, and is the Goddess of Love, of
Morning and of the Evening Star. There is something quite moving, but also strangely
incongruous about a love goddess making the kind of psycho-spiritual descent detailed
above. Aphrodite/Venus, for example, seems to have been a more frivolous, pleasure seeking
being. I have a hunch that Inanna, however, is closer to the truth of loveand in this sense
the Orpheus/Eurydice story runs parallel. Both stories harbour a profound truth most of us
would prefer to flee from. Genuine love has the capacity to up-end the world as given (by
society, parents, schooling, etc.) and catapult the lovers into a realm of opposition, the
equation easily becomes: our love against your socially constructed morals/rules. In terms of
Inanna, it seemed important to the Ancient Sumerians and Akkadians that a love goddess
also, after underworld descent, took on the powers and mysteries of death and rebirth,
emerging not only as a sky or moon goddess, but as the goddess who rules over the sky, the
earth and the underworld.4
Although Inanna descends for reasons that are not entirely clearpartly due to
translation reasons and partly to do with lost details of the Sumerian cultural contextthere
is a sense that, like a mystic or shamaness, it is an act of willperhaps with cultural
connotations related to the necessity of rulers, etc. possessing mystical knowledge of the
underworld. A key part of her story then is a willed descent in which all of her earthly powers
are voluntarily relinquished. At the gates of the underworld Neti, the chief gatekeeper, asks
her: Why has your heart led you on the road/ From which no traveller returns? Her first and
perhapsgiven the later narrativemost important answer is: Because of my older sister,
Ereshkigal.
Ereshkigal is the Sumerian Queen of the Underworld, a despised figure that
Wolkstein theorises is the other neglected side of Inanna. She also says that Ereshkigal is a
1
2
3
4

Sigmund Freud, Civilisation and its Discontents, pg. 44, Norton, 1961.
Sigmund Freud, Civilisation and its Discontents, pg. 91, Norton, 1961.
Dianne Wolkstein, Introduction, Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth, p.xvii, 1983.
Dianne Wolkstein, Introduction, Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth, p.xvi, 1983.

figure who has no protective or caring mother, father, or brother (that we know of), who
wears no clothes, and whose childhood is lost, in short the prototype of the witch.5
Although it is always dangerous to psychologise ancient mythological sequences
like this, Wolksteins argument matches my own intuitive response to the story. In a sense,
the Ereshkigal/Inanna confrontation matches the Enkidu/Gilgamesh confrontation (wrestling
match) outlined in other ancient Sumerian texts. Were women of the new urban centres also
grappling with loss of self, growth in shadow, i.e. growth in despised aspects of the self that
were, as it were, buried underground? The myth is psychologically superior, in some
respects, to the Gilgamesh myth in that it outlines certain sacred verticalities (in the psychogeographical sense) that would become familiar features of Near-Eastern, Classical and other
later European religious traditions. The geography of the otherworld in Dantes Medieval
vision of Heaven, Purgatory and Inferno in The Divine Comedy, for example, placed lightness
of being, closeness to divinity, etc. as Above the earth, and heaviness of being, sin, loss,
death and distance from god, as Below the earth. The Hellish world Ereshkigal presides
over reveals some similarities to the later Medieval hell of Christianityas vividly displayed
in Dantes Inferno.
The point is Inanna chooses to make the descent, perhaps in order to heal the split
(retrieve some of the energy locked up in Ereshkigals rage?) that develops with too much
civilised, urban, bureaucratic living. It is a dangerous journey and to begin with things do not
go well for her. Upon arrival she is naked and bowed low before her nemesis, Erishkigal,
who quickly has her judged before fastening on Inanna the eye of death and soon enough:
Inanna was turned into a corpse,
a piece of rotting meat,
and was hung from a hook on the wall.

Modern Westerners are not accustomed to seeing any value in such a momentis this girl
mad? Why would anyone want to descend to the underworld to end up like that! Luckily
Inanna has taken some precautions and with the help of servants news of what has happened
in the gloomy realms eventually reaches the great father God, Enki (two other father gods
apparently decide that it is her own fault and refuse to help). Enki is grieved and fashions two
shape-shifting creatures, a kurgarra and a galatur who are to indulge in a semi-erotic
conversation with the supposedly insatiable Ereshkigal. When she is satisfied with their
discussion they are to ask for the corpse that hangs from the hook, i.e. the corpse of Inanna.
All goes to plan and the two creatures sprinkle the corpse with water and food of life
and Inanna is resurrected. There is, however, a hitchsomeone living must take her place in
the underworld. Various demons accompany her to the surface in order to select a victim.
Eventually, she fastens the eye of death on her own husband, DummaziRobert Graves,
no doubt, would be satisfied (another sacred king goes to his grave for the great Goddess!).
However, to continue with our psychological reading for a moment, we might admit this is a
less than ideal solutionthough in the text after being beaten he manages to turn into a
serpent and flee. One way to interpret the myth is to suggest that upon her return to the
surface, Inanna intuits that urban living, as represented by the patriarchal king who has not
confronted his shadow, is oppressive to her in some way. She cannot abide his false state and
thus condemns him to a similar descent-rebirth experience, which he evades.
So much for a psychological interpretation! What fascinates me about this story from
a creative perspective is not the ending, so much as the sheer dignity and bravery attached to
the act of willed descent. There is something truly life-affirming about Inannas decision to
5

Wolkstein and Kramer, Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth, p.158.

disassemble her egoher social personaand voluntarily undergo psycho-spiritual

dismemberment and ego annihilation. Of course were close to the age-old motif of the
shamanic initiation journey, and thus in many respects I confess that I see the Inanna figure
as an inspirationas a model for carrying out the true task of the writer/artist, modern or
ancient. That task is voluntarily exploration of the outcast aspects of self and other in an
attempt to retrieve a sense of wholeness.
In the early seventies one of the most famous musicians of the Western world, John Lennon,
turned his back on all the hysteria surrounding the Beatles in order to cry and scream about
some of the hurts of his childhood with what the media labelled as a pop psychologist
known as Arthur Janov. Janovs book, The Primal Scream however, was a fascinating treatise
on the subtlety and physicality of childhood trauma. Lennon went on to write Working Class
Hero, Well, Well, Well and other songs under Janovs influence. Some see Janovs model
as a regression (a word Psychoanalysts are fond of!) to an earlier discarded Freudian cathartic
model. Others rightly saw the Reichian body therapy linksBioenergetics, a development
on Reichian therapy, was doing much the same sort of stuff, that is to say locating repressed
memories deep in the body musculature and releasing such traumas via massage and other
more direct, less intellectual, approaches. The physicality of the Primal approach reached its
zenith in the book Imprints in which Janovs clients described reliving aspects of their
biological birth. Still other critics, perhaps educated in Eastern traditions, saw primal in yoga
terms, whilst others realised that the explosion in the numbers of young people using
psychoactive drugs had unleashed psycho-physical realms of the human unconscious long
suppressed in Western culture. Janovs therapy seemed to be responding to these new
dimensions of being, though primal was never a drug therapy in the sense that say, Grofs,
was (which saw LSD as a therapeutic tool to begin with).
One of the books I took with me to the UK in 1984 was Janovs The Primal Scream.
The descriptions in the book of a primal scream capable of expressing all the frustration,
hurt, anger and sadness of a damaged childhood was extremely compelling to me in the state
I was in at that time. The idea was that therapy would break down the psychophysical
defences of the client such that this profound cathartic release could take place. As the
therapy proceeded clients released more and more of their primal pool of pain and found
that the split between their real and false selves dwindled. They became real, authentic human
beingswho they really were. Given my materialist (philosophically speaking) up-bringing
all this appealed to me. There was no mysticism, no impetus to transcend the body and
passions as in patriarchal spiritual traditions, also no room for intellectual game-playing.
Children are not intellectual beings, according to Janov, they are feeling beings. The road to
authenticity lay in the emotions and the body, in the repressed pain of infancy and
childhood.
Although Id read the book in the middle of my second year at University, followed
soon after by Imprints and I think The Primal Revolution, I was too cowardly to have a go at
the therapy at that stage. It was all too weird, too outside my reality paradigm. Equally there
was no one around to share this withOh, I see you want to lie on mattress on the floor and
scream and cry like a demented baby so you can be a better person? Hmm, they do that in
LA, after all thats where The Doors started out, all those bloody hippies, but they dont do it
in Auckland New Zealand! How could I even justify to myself undergoing the complete
cathartic clean out prescribed by Primal when I didnt have a mental illness, just had the
standard late-teenage problems in being? Nobody I knew would believe I was in need of
such radical psychic surgery, quite the opposite I seemed to be functioning perfectly out
there in society, a true model of adaptation and achievement, my whole life before me as an
economics teacher, elite athlete and eventual political candidate. Plenty would have sold their

grandfathers for the opportunities in front of me.

Just before I left for the UK I recall the Tears for Fears album The Hurting came
out. Though the lyrics were bland, and the synthesiser music seemed a far cry from the
screaming electric guitars that I preferred, the bands commitment to a primal perspective
turned out to be a real comfort to me throughout 1984. They later went on to write some
pretty classy pop-songs in which the message was delivered in a more subtle manner, but
The Hurting, like The Primal Scream, bolstered me in my desire to get myself right on my
terms. A plan was forming to save up enough cash to travel to Los Angeles and undergo
primal therapy with Janov and his crewjust as John Lennon had done.
Whilst living in Wales with my older brothers I learned just how deeply Lennon had
committed to the therapy. Phil, who is a long-term Beatles fan, had a copy of the Lennon/Ono
albums lying around so I listened with interest. The screams of hurt and pain on some of the
songs were heart-rending. More importantly it seemed that Lennon had gone on to live a
fairly happy domestic life committed to his wife and son, Sean, thereafter. I remember feeling
a degree of fear reading about Lennons later perspective on the therapywhat if he saw it as
a failure? The fear was due to the fact that primal was rapidly becoming my own antidote of
choice to the way I was feeling about life. The one person I could talk to about all this at that
time was my brother Andy. As we toured the length and breadth of the Britain in our beat-up
blue Mini we occasionally talked about the subject matter of The Primal Scream. Although
my Celtic disposition (I am not by nature a materialist in philosophical matters, for
example) objected to aspects of Janovs theory my emotions and body were telling me that
some sort of emotional release would be essential for me if I wanted to move on in my life.
Just before my return to New Zealand in late 1984, however, I still imagined that a successful
reunion with Alison might fix all the other problems in my lifemight even abnegate the
need for radical personal change. I wanted to believe in magic!
I remember fragments of our eventual reunionit was in the kitchen of her parents
home, a large white-painted house on a hillside featuring magnificent views of Mairangi Bay
township, Rangitoto Island and the Hauraki Gulf. Id had stomach cramps for much of the
afternoon (after organising the meeting by phone) and probably looked pale and pasty.
Nevertheless, I arrived carrying a small collection of Style Council posters and tapes (the
things shed requested in her October letter) as well as other small gifts. She greeted me at the
door but looked a little uncomfortable. We wandered upstairs and were soon joined by a guy,
maybe a year or so younger than I: This is my boyfriend she said quietly.
I had the urge to walk out on the spot. It felt like an ambush. However, another part of
me wanted to check out the situationperhaps she was playing some kind of game with both
of us. Id been away for almost eight months after allperhaps I deserved to be ambushed.
He took her hand as the three of us sat at the dining table and they took turns casually asking
me questions about the British music sceneapparently he was also English by birth and
loved The Jam and Style Council. He looked like a decent guy with few if any of the identity
issues I was battling.
Thankfully our uncomfortable three-way conversation didnt last long. I handed over
the giftsdiscretely retaining the card Id taken hours to write (full of declarations of
affection and hope for the future, etc.)then made up some bullshit excuse to get me out of
the house as quickly as possible. I felt completely numb afterwardsas though the moment
had too much emotional charge to properly integrate, as though wed been speaking in a kind
of dream. Given my state of shock I didnt want to go home immediately. Instead I felt an
urge to walk, despite the gathering gloom, to a near-by golf course. Once there I sat down
beneath a large pine tree and promptly cried my eyes outsomething I hadnt done for years.

Her message to me was simple, though in truth it took a while to accept fully: she was in love
with her boyfriend, and thus we were not about to become lovers. In retrospect, she made an
eminently rational decision (given my then state of mind). I was still emotionally constipated,
overly-serious, and inordinately pessimistic about life. My future also looked bleaker than it
had been before leaving for the UKgiven I was on the verge of quitting University and
cricket. To put it bluntly I was a bit of a dud prospect between late-1984 and 1989. I also
suspect that like Tony in The Sense of an Ending, memory can conveniently absolve us of our
own shadow traitssometimes whilst transferring them to others. Im aware that Alison
may have thought that I was the one playing gamesthough in my case it was probably to
avoid the ascent of overwhelming feeling from elsewhere in my life.
Regardless of how Alison really viewed our (non)relationship, it soon became
obvious that I had to find the courage and strength to move on in life from within myselfto
carry my own millstone/ out of the trees (as Roger Waters wrote and sang in The Pros and
Cons of Hitchhiking, released in 1984). Like Waters, I eventually turned to song-writing and
I have Alison to thank for some of the better songs and poems I created prior to 1991. I also
began the unpublished novel The Sorrows of Bridget during that time. Just as Robert Graves
had promised: disappointment in love can make for interesting, even beautiful, music!
Things changed rapidly for me in December 1984. I took a job as a glazier and driver for a
local glass company (North Shore Glass). The job was interesting for a time and gave me the
money I needed to move out of home. The decision to discontinue my B. Com studies
followed soon after. If nothing else, the meeting with Alison and her boyfriend had also
liberated me to seek a relationship elsewhere. Despite feeling devastated I resolved to move
on as quickly as possible. Unfortunately such deep emotional entanglementseven when
unansweredare not so easily discarded. Within a few weeks I had a girlfriend after hooking
up with Dalia, an old classmate from Rangitoto College, at a local pub. Although our
incompatibility became obvious later, Dalia did give me the support and courage I needed in
order to take risks on the way to a happier, more authentic Ian. For those gifts alone I
remain very grateful. We also communicated easily at the start and my friendship circle
expanded to include many former class-mates Id barely known at school. Unfortunately, to
me our relationship more closely resembled an intense male-female friendship.
I dawdled over making a decision about my future in cricket. I played several games
for Birkenhead City after returning to New Zealandtaking 6 wickets in my first game back.
I was also selected for trials for the Auckland provincial senior teameventually debuting
against a Northern Districts 11. One of my last games, as it turned out.
In the end it was neither the internal upheavals I was experiencing nor my interest in
literature, psychology and the humanities that curtailed my long-held dreams to become a
professional cricketer. The stomach cramps and vomiting bouts that had struck intermittently
whilst living in the UKespecially after bowling spells for Worcesterbecame more
frequent and painful in early 1985 (possibly due to the renewed fast-bowling load). One
morning in late-January I woke in agony. I was doubled-up with the pain and unable to move
from the bed. Dalia and I were renting a large, old weatherboard house with friends and
siblings at the time. It overlooked half an acre of vineyards and was only a few kilometres
from where my parents livedit was a peaceful, creative place despite being damp and full
of large, audacious rats.
Someone rang Dalia who quickly organised an emergency trip for me to the hospital.
I sat with my head against the dashboard for the entire trip. I was quickly diagnosed with a
burst appendix and they operated on me half an hour later. During the operation they
discovered I also had advanced peritonitis in my gut. There was a bit to clean up, said the

Surgeon after the operation. He also intimated that wed come in just in time, Another 12hrs
and we wouldnt have been able to do anything for you! Given I was spaced out on a
cocktail of drugs and antibiotics I found it difficult to absorb everything he was saying and
quickly retreated into psychedelic dreams of being chased by massive talking syringes. The
following morningfinally conscious enough to take things inI became aware of the
presence of Dalia, Mum and Dad around my hospital bed.
As it turned out my stomach muscles would never be the same again (I learnt this
after a season of local cricket in Australia in the late 80s when I quickly developed chronic
pain around the area of the original operation). In 2006, after a trip to Vietnam in which I
hefted around large travel bags for 6 weeks, I arrived home in agony and was soon diagnosed
with a small hernia in the same area. A professional cricket career may not have been
possible even had I wished it. In retrospect back in 1985 part of me perhaps knew Id been
pushing my body in extremis over the previous 8 years of constant quick-bowling. My little
brush with mortality perhaps acted as a reality checkat some unconscious level I think I
became more tentative about the physical risks associated with fast-bowling.
Post-op everything seemed differentthough in truth it was a mop up job. Firstly, Dalia and
I became closerdespite the stresses we were facing. As we talked and shared experiences I
began to feel more empowered to make some big life decisions. She was also an immigrant
and had had a tough time of it when shed first arrived in New Zealand. Her country of birth
was Israel. Her father was a Russian Jew and her mother was from Ecuador. Though
incompatible in many waysparticularly by the endwe would never-the-less spend 6 years
together.
From the perspective of mid-life I think 1985 was my Freudian
year. It is probably fair to say that Primal Therapy is adapted
psychoanalysis with strong Humanistic elements. Its similarities
become most visible when one looks at the uniqueness of Freuds
thinking in comparison to other psychological schools. In 1985 I
found that I read more and more Freud. Freud, like Janov and
Reich, grounded my innate tendency to flee from painful personal
truths, emotions and memories into mysticism, mythology,
philosophy and the like. Also as a young male just beginning to
explore adult sexualityensnared also in the troubadour
idealisations that accompany unrequited loveFreuds
emphasis on the role of sexual repression in generating neurosis
spoke directly to aspects of my own situation. Of course sex is a
core obsession of young men (and women) the world overthey ask: Where can I get it?
What will it involve for me (what will turn me on)? How does it relate to other areas of my
life? Are my desires similar to species norms or differenti.e. am I a deviant? etc. Reich, of
course, took the sex element in Freud to its logical bio-psychological conclusionin the
process providing a theoretical basis for the so-called Sexual Revolution.
For a short time I virtually became a card-carrying Reichian (his unique combination
of socialism and psychoanalysis appealed)though I was far from liberated in sexual
matters. I even did a few sessions of Reichian therapy with an old man in West Auckland in
late 1985. Each time I had to lie on my back on a large, blue padded mat. Usually I was then
asked to relax and recount any significant dreams, disturbing emotions, etc. I recalled. If a
dream image related to a specific part of the body the therapist would encourage me to focus
on that part and process the energy through a range of exercises, or massage. Although I
had much admiration for this therapists knowledge (and we discussed many things) we soon

went our separate ways over the issue of catharsis. I told him one day that I felt he was
unwilling to allow me to properly grieve, get angry, etc (as per the descriptions of primals in
The Primal Scream). He said that he felt catharsis was wasted energy. On the bus home that
night I knew I had to look for another therapist.
Around this time I read Civilisation and its Discontents more thoroughly, as well as
several Freudian primers and a number of Freuds essays. I remember feeling profoundly
liberated by his idea that society makes virtually everyone neurotici.e. that we all contract
problems in being from society via our caregivers, teachers, elders, etc.. Reichs notion of the
emotional plague also had great resonance for me at that time. Also, by then Id had enough
life experience to know that many apparently normal people were neurotic, if not downright psychopathic, away from the public gaze. Why else all the child abuse, and cruelty in
the world? Why all the shows about murder, rape and extreme violenceand why all the war
movies? Freuds idea of an ID was to me a self-evident fact. Living under the constant threat
of nuclear war also made me appreciate another controversial aspect of his theoriesthe idea
of the death instinct.
Ive never forgotten those somewhat pessimistic insights and to me they represent
Freud and Reich at their Existentialist, but also dirty realist, best. My dystopian novel of
2003, Dream-Dust Parasites, is to some extent an explorationup-dated for the new
millenniumof the mass neuroses theories of Reich and Freud, though Existential themes
also figure. It took a decade and a half to properly convert the impact of their ideas into
original art. As a twenty-one year old, however, those theories hit my like a proverbial
sledgehammer. They mediated my view of reality and moulded, to some extent, the decisions
I made about what was worth doing in life, i.e. what was meaningful. According to Freud and
Reich conformity represents capitulation to various socially contracted psychobiological
illnesses. Which made my question: How should I immunise myself against such illnesses
i.e. where should I go to find a cure?
A decision to undergo some form of psychoanalytic/Primal therapy had been
gathering momentum since mid-1984. After recovering from the operation I began visiting
the university medical library to gather proof or otherwise of Janovs psychobiological
theories as outlined in Prisoners of Pain in particular. All the time I thought hed be
unmasked as a new age charlatan, but miraculously, the psychobiology held up remarkably
well. My head became full of psychobiological theoriesin particular the role of endorphins,
enkephalins and the like in mediating emotional pain. Indeed, I remember reading reams of
scientific literature concerned with the discovery, functioning etc. of the internal opiates
that Janov claimed came into existence as a result of repressing traumatic experiences.
According to Janov, psychologically numbness implies psychobiological numbness.
I decided to find someone in NZ or Australia who could assist me through the
therapyif it was helpful to John Lennon, Tears for Fears and others, it might just be helpful
to me as well! There were aspects of my life I felt I desperately needed to primal. Nothing
else mattered for a timenot university, not sport, not money, not even the issue of which
particular woman I should spend my life with. Everything was held in abeyanceLets see
how I view this stuff post-primal, was my silent mantra. I viewed my commitment as a
commitment to self growthalmost as an avant gardist political act since Id resolved to
steer well clear of mainstream psychology which I had no faith in whatsoever given its
propensity to pigeon-hole in the name of social norms.
During the same period I sold many of the books Id accumulated during my two
years at university and also did something that Ive regretted ever since. One afternoon whilst
living in a caravan park in Long Bay I simply threw all of my early poetry and fiction into a
municipal binostensibly to signal a definitive break with the past. Dreams of pursuing a
career in literature or music were to be put on the back burner until I knew who I was.

Creativity was not central to primal versions of psychoanalysis and besides I wanted to move
out of my intellect (my natural disposition) and into my body, emotions and memories. For
rest of 1985 and much of 1986 I found myself in a self-created interstitiuma kind of
artificial in-between place. To paraphrase John Lennon, however, life rarely stands still
even when were absorbed with making other plans. Dalia became pregnant just seven
months into our relationship (after I tried to end the relationship in mid-1985) and by March
of 1986, still at the lowest ebb in my life, I had to deal with being a father to a beautiful baby
girl called Lena.
In remembering 1985 I think the key thing I wanted to address was the sense of joylessness
Id felt since my late teenage years. To revisit Island Four for a moment: I felt numb and
disconnected much of the time and recognised this as a problem. I also didnt feel good about
myself as a human beingI wanted to learn to like myself more, to be more genuinely
friendly and sociable with others, and more at ease with myself. This didnt seem a lot to ask
of the world and yet it seemed a distant dream at that particular time in my life.
I washed ashore on the Isle of Discontent Civilians in February 1985 seeking to
address these issues and was never quite the same thereafter!
Summary
At Freuds most pessimistic, and arguably most insightful, we perhaps revisit the ancient
myth of Inannas descent into the underworld. A writer influenced by Neo-Freudian thinking
may see a creative text as a kind of site of confession, or rather free associationa place of
conflict between chaotic desire (the pleasure principle) and the reality principle. To write
is to enter into dialogue with the personal unconscious (however we may envisage it). To
write an imaginative textand perhaps even to read oneis, as with Inanna, to engage in a
dignified, willed descent into the self in search of healing and self-knowledge.
After the chaotic changes of 1984 the next two years were a period of relative stability
for mein truth I was busy gathering the courage to undertake my own willed and dignified
descent into the realms of the human unconscious.
Recall, however, that Inanna had to descend many levels before she could resolve the
issues she had with her evil sister Erishkigal

Author Bio (as at May 2013)

Dr. Ian Irvine (Hobson) is an Australian-based
poet/lyricist, writer and non-fiction writer. His work has
featured in publications as diverse as Humanitas (USA),
The Antigonish Review (Canada), Tears in the Fence
(UK), Linq (Australia) and Takahe (NZ), as well as in a
number of Australian national poetry anthologies: Best
Australian Poems 2005 (Black Ink Books) and Agenda:
Australian Edition, 2005. He is the author of three
books and co-editor of three journals and currently
teaches in the Professional Writing and Editing program
at BRIT (Bendigo, Australia) as well as the same program at Victoria University, St. Albans,
Melbourne. He has also taught history and social theory at La Trobe University (Bendigo,
Australia) and holds a PhD for his work on creative, normative and dysfunctional forms of
alienation and morbid ennui.